Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Southern Style Green Beans

When I put up all of my purple pole beans from the garden I knew before I even had them all picked exactly how I wanted to cook them. It is the way my mother, my grandmother, and my great-grandmother have always cooked green beans. Like heirlooms, in my family we passed down more than the silver, we pass down recipes, but this is more than a recipe....this is a technique!

Dump the beans into a pot that will be large enough for the beans covered in water.

Phew, that was the hard part!

Now sprinkle with salt and pepper. Go light on the salt as you are getting ready to add the secret ingredient that will contain its fair share of sodium!

Here it is my friends, the secret ingredient, the contents of that mason jar in the fridge that others are afraid to touch. It is bacon grease! We in the South love it! We preserve it like gold after a pound of bacon has been cooked on Saturday morning, we covet large quantities of it possessed by others, we use it in everything from cornbread to collard greens!

I usually just place the whole spoon in the pot with the bacon grease to ensure that every last bit will be melted off by the boiling water.

Here is one of my favorite tools in my kitchen arsenal, the ole wooden spoon! I use these religiously and have about a million of them which I use for everything!

Give the green beans a good stir making sure to completely submerge the bacon drippings in the water so that when the water boils it will melt it down and distribute it throughout the pot.

I just thought this was a pretty picture...

After about an hour I decided to do a quick taste test and decided to throw in an onion to add a little flavor. With the bacon grease, salt and pepper you don't want to go overboard with the seasoning but an onion never hurt anyone!

4 hours, 31 mintes and 17 seconds later I think they were officially done!!!

DIG IN!!!

I am just proud of this picture because I am finally learning to take pictures manually and this one was taken on full manual!

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